Tuesday, November 17, 2009

I'm looking to round up a pile of citations of functionalists who have explicitly endorsed, in response to Ned Block's Chinese Nation argument from "Troubles with Functionalism," that an appropriately organized Chinese population would give rise to a solitary group mind.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Earlier today, Mike Collins passed his defense of his doctoral dissertation in philosophy at the CUNY Grad Center. Mike was one of my students in philosophy and cognitive science at WPU and was one of my coauthors on "Evolving Artificial Minds and Brains" (http://www.petemandik.com/philosophy/emb.PDF).

I was pleased to serve on the committee today with Jesse Prinz (director), Michael Devitt, Michael Levin, and Samir Chopra.

Friday, October 9, 2009

Lots of peeps have been talking recently about the comic book treatment of Russell and Wittgenstein, Logicomix, as well as Robert Crumb's comic adaptation of Genesis, but how many of those peeps are aware of the following?

This drawing of Bertrand Russell being hit on the head with a meatball is from Robert Crumb's short comic, "MEATBALL." The whole thing is viewable here: [link]

Submission of papers having interdisciplinary interest is strongly encouraged. Papers should be no longer than 3000 words and be accompanied by an abstract of no more than 150 words. Submissions for the philosophy side of the program, accompanied by the abstract submission form from the website, should be sent to:

Daniel WeiskopfDepartment of PhilosophyGeorgia State Universitysspp.submission@gmail.com

Monday, October 5, 2009

The Tinkertoy computer is not fully autornatic: a human operator must crank theread head up and down and must manage its input. After the computer's opponentmakes a move, the operator walks to the front of the machine to adjust the corepiece inside the read head, registering the contestant's move. The operator thenpulls on a string to cock the core piece for its impending whirl of recognition.When it discovers a memory that matches the current state of the game, the corepiece spins, and the computer indicates its move.

'There are many good reasons not to write a book on happiness,' says Daniel Haybron in the Preface to his book. It quickly becomes obvious to the reader, however, that there are many good reasons to read it. There has recently been a spate of books and articles on well-being, the good life, and happiness understood as well-being, that which benefits a person. Haybron's book is the first book-length philosophical treatment of happiness understood as a psychologicalcondition rather than as well-being. This in itself is a significant accomplishment. But the book is also an original and thorough investigation, richly informed by empirical psychology, of almost every topic connected, or seen as connected, with happiness: the self, well-being and virtue, and the good society. It is written in an engaging, often humorous, sometimes poetic, style, and contains a wealth of illustrations from life, literature, film, science, the arts, the news media, and Haybron's own prodigious imagination. Because the topic is so new, and the phenomenology of happiness so elusive, Haybron uses what he calls 'an elaborate form of ostension, pointing to the phenomenon without fully elucidating it' (42). He engages with both the latest science and ancient philosophy in elucidating the nature of happiness. Haybron's grasp of the relevant literatures is nothing short of astonishing. The scope of the book may be gleaned from the following overview.

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Here's a distinction that many writers seem insufficiently sensitive to in reporting research by and about Libet and the questioned efficacy of conscious will: It's the distinction between when something seems to have happened and when something really happened. This is a distinction we might label as that between subjective and objective time or apparent and real time.

It seems easy enough to acknowledge such a distinction and find clear cases of its applicability. Unbeknownst to George, his watch is 5-mins fast. So, when some event actually happened may be a quite different time (a difference of 5 mins) than when it seemed to George to have happened. This is so simple, that young children can keep them apart. So whence the alleged difficulty?

Things start to get a bit confusing when we realize that mental events we can call seemings can have real objective times of occurrence too. Especially confusing is when the seemings concern times of occurrence. Ordinary language is ill-equipped to keep the real time/apparent time distinction clear in describing such situations. (My spell-checker is hating on "seemings" right now.) Suppose George's seeming objectively occurred at 12:50, but it seemed to George that the mental event in question occurred at 12:55. Note how totally ambiguous a statement like the following can seem once such a distinction is in mind:

"It seemed to George that he made a conscious decision at 12:55 to flick his wrist"

Is 12:55 here the objective time of the seeming or the subjective time of occurrence according to George?

Here's some recent blogging on Libet that seems to me to make the mistake I'm talking about.

In 1983 Libet showed that before subjects announced their decision to perform an action (and hence, or so Libet assumed, before deciding to perform an action) their motor cortex was already preparing the way for the act in question.

It seems that the safe thing to say of what Libet showed is that the apparent (according to the subject) time of the conscious descision was later than the objective time of the (perhaps conscious) decision.

...Benjamin Libet’s remarkable experiments, which seemed to show that decisions to move were really made half a second before we were aware of having decided.

Here the crucial ambiguity is with "half a second before we were aware of having decided." Is that 1/2second subjective? If so, that's a modest, though unexciting, description of what Libet showed. Is it instead objective? That would be very exciting indeed, but it's a great mystery how Libet, or anyone, could possibly show such a thing.

Anyway, the line I'm recommending here is what I take to be be one of Dan Dennett's key insights in his various discussions of Libet, so I don't pretend any originality here.

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Astute readers will recall that we have seen P-Zombie Pete before (though not by that name).Sorry if this comic is sort of all over the place. I am very sleep deprived today, so random stream-of-thought comic is what you get!Oh! And I almost forgot, the Zombie Karl Popper comic was featured in the [...]"

In the chapters devoted to the nature of consciousness,Thomas contends that Spinoza, Locke, and Hume offer few insights. Indeed sheroundly criticizes Spinoza and Locke for deficiencies in their views. Oneproblem with Spinoza's theory, she says, is that he seems committed to denyingthat human minds are conscious subjects. For if God is the only substance, it'shard to see how he could fail to be the only conscious subject (81-82).Moreover, she adds, if the divine mind is just a bundle of ideas, as Spinozaappears to hold, it's hard to see how even God could be a conscious subject(Ibid.). Thomas objects to Locke's view on theground that his account of memory conflicts with his belief that we are alwaysconscious of all our ideas (156-59).

On the positive side, Thomas sees Descartes and Leibniz asproposing accounts of the nature of consciousness -- accounts that may be viewedas precursors of the sort of higher-order thought approaches that some advocatetoday. She also argues that many early modern philosophers recognize, even ifonly tacitly, different kinds of consciousness.For instance, on her reading Descartes, Leibniz, and Hume all distinguish atleast implicitly between what contemporary philosophers would call 'perceptualconsciousness', 'access consciousness', and 'phenomenal consciousness'; andDescartes further distinguishes between 'organism consciousness' and'introspective consciousness'. Thomas appears to be rather impressed by thispoint; however, I believe it rests on a faulty inference. In each case shestarts with the banal observation that a philosopher recognizes consciousness ofdifferent kinds of things, and from this infers the substantive conclusion thathe believes in different kinds of consciousness. This is clearly a non-sequitur.Consciousness of different kinds of things does not imply different kinds ofconsciousness, and in the absence of any explicit evidence that thesephilosophers drew such distinctions, we should not be so quick to suppose thatthey did.

Friday, September 25, 2009

"This was intended to illustrate the secret fears which beset the Great while they sleep."

"The writing of these stories was a great release of my hitherto unexpressed feelings and of thoughts which could not be stated without mention of fears that had no rational basis... In this way it was possible to warn of dangers which might or might not occur in the near future." ~~Bertrand Russell

I have an increased appreciation for the graphic elements in the book: Gately's scrawly 'Yo.' The precise rendering of the markings on drugs on page 891. Peemster's chart. The annular ring/eclipse/special wobbly lens/meniscus glyph that appears throughout. The sweet and earnest lunula in the bottom-right corner of page 981, like a coda symbol in music, asking you to pick up again or exit the phrase, depending.

While I know I need to shelve the book again for quite some time and move on to other projects and lick my psychic wounds, I am incredibly glad I participated in Infinite Summer. The guides at the mother site have been good company. And those I encountered on the splinter blogs I feel queerly affectionate toward, as though we had a real bond even though my commenting was sporadic and my status as a newbie blogger painfully obvious. To name just a few folks I Identify with: Infinite Zombies,Infinite Detox,Infinite Tasks, I Just Read About That . . . and more. The list may not be infinite but my appreciation for their contributions and insights is. Keep Coming Back.

From Key Terms in Philosophy of Mind by Pete Mandik, to be published by Continuum in May 2010 (link to publisher's page).

objectivity, (1) of that which exists, that it exists independently of any one’s PERCEPTION of it or THOUGHT or BELIEF about it. (2) Of that which exists, KNOWLEDGE about it being acquirable via multiple kinds of EXPERIENCE. (3) Of mental states, especially judgments or beliefs, that they are arrived at impartially and do not simply reflect the bias of the judge or believer and, additionally, have their TRUTH-value (true or false) in virtue of factors that have objectivity in sense (1) of the term “objectivity.” All three senses of “objectivity” may be contrasted against correlative senses of SUBJECTIVITY.

Despite sense (3)’s being explicitly about a feature of mental states, senses (1) and (2) have played more central roles in the philosophy of mind. Sense (1) of “objectivity” has played a central role in discussions of REALISM and TRUTH. The classical debate between early versions of MATERIALISM and IDEALISM concerned whether so-called material objects existed independently of anyone’s perceiving or conceiving of them. Related are discussions of the contrast between PRIMARY QUALITIES and SECONDARY QUALITIES, with the former being more objective than the latter.

Sense (2) of “objectivity” and a contrasting sense of “subjectivity” have been central in discussions of phenomenal consciousness (see CONSCIOUSNESS, PHENOMENAL). Some philosophers have urged that WHAT IT IS LIKE to see red or to be a bat is subjective in the sense of being knowable only from the point of view of one who has seen red or been a bat. In contrast, one need not have any particular kind of experience to know about the brain states of a bat or of a person seeing red. It is claimed, for instance, that while a person blind from birth may not know what it is like to see red, everything physical about the brain states of a red-seeing person is knowable by the blind person. (See also FIRST-PERSON; FIRST-PERSON AUTHORITY.)

subjectivity, (1) Of that which exists, that its existence depends on someone’s PERCEPTION of it or THOUGHT or BELIEF about it. (2) Of that which exists, KNOWLEDGE about it being acquirable via limited kinds of EXPERIENCE. (3) Of mental states, especially judgments or beliefs, that they fail to be impartial and instead reflect the bias of the judge or believer and have their TRUTH-value (true or false) in virtue of factors that have subjectivity in sense (1) of the term. All three senses of “subjectivity” may be contrasted against correlative senses of OBJECTIVITY. For further discussion of both subjectivity and objectivity, see the entry on objectivity.

Sunday, September 20, 2009

From Key Terms in Philosophy of Mind by Pete Mandik, to be published by Continuum in May 2010 (link to publisher's page).

emotion, an affective mental state, examples of which include states of fear, anger, disgust, and joy. Emotions are often regarded as obstacles to RATIONALITY, but they play central roles in quality of life, personal preferences and priorities, social affiliations, and morality. Emotions may be distinguished from other mental states such as judgment or BELIEF by the relative closeness of association between emotions and characteristic bodily reactions (e.g., increased heart rate, perspiration). Emotions may be differentiated from each other along numerous dimensions such as (1) the presence and type of intentional object (see INTENTIONALITY), (2) intensity, and (3) valence (positive versus negative). So, for an example concerning (1), joy and resentmentmay be distinguished by what they are about or directed at, where resentmentis directed toward other people in a way that joy need not be. For an example concerning (2), irritation and rage may be distinguished by, among other things, their intensity. For an example concerning (3), joy and fear have opposite valences, with there being a relatively obvious sense in which one is more positive than the other.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

It's the time of the semester to think about this problem again: how to get students with only a few logic lectures under their belts to warm up to the very unintuitive truth-table for the material conditional. Here's my current favorite strategy:

Step 1: Point out the obviousness of holding P->Q true for true P and true Q, and holding P->Q false for true P and false Q.

Step 2: Point out the redundancy generated between conditionals and conjunctions if P->Q is held to be true only when P and Q are both true; and the redundancy generated between conditionals and equivalences when P->Q is held to be true whenever P and Q both have the same truth value. It's clear, at this point, that P->Q is going to need to be true when P is false and Q is true; the remaining question is what's best when P and Q are both false.

Step 3: Point out that if P->Q is held to be false when P and Q are both false, then we don't get to recover the intuitive equivalency between PQ and [(P->Q)&(Q->P)]. Demonstrate with truth tables.

Step 4: Point out that if P->Q is held to be false when P and Q are both false, then we don't get to hold valid arguments as equivalent to tautological conditionals (which is a pretty sweet thing to be able to do). Demonstrate with truth tables for simple examples such as simplification [(P&Q)->P] and addition [P->(PvQ)].

ABSTRACT

Neuropsychological findings used to motivate the "two visual systems" hypothesis have been taken to endanger a pair of widely accepted claims about spatial representation in conscious visual experience. The first is the claim that visual experience represents 3-D space around the perceiver using an egocentric frame of reference. The second is the claim that there is a constitutive link between the spatial contents of visual experience and the perceiver's bodily actions. In this paper, I review and assess three main sources of evidence for the two visual systems hypothesis. I argue that the best interpretation of the evidence is in fact consistent with both claims. I conclude with some brief remarks on the relation between visual consciousness and rational agency.

Neuroscientist and frequent Brain Hammer commenter, Eric Thomson, posting over at Brains, has written a terrific piece, The Meta-Hard Problem. I highly recommend that people check out both the post and the excellent discussion thread that sprouts forth.

My favorite chunk from the main post:

[Chalmers] sometimes suggests that his claim that experience is something over and above the biology isn't an assumption, but definitional of experience. Indeed, he often writes as if this loaded notion of experience is pretheoretic and obvious (i.e., the 'primary' intension). As he says in the Introduction to the book, "I cannot prove that there is a further [hard] problem, any more than I can prove that consciousness exists. We know about consciousness more directly than we know about anything else, so 'proof' is inappropriate.'

Speaking personally, such high-falutin' notions (about causal and functional underpinnings of experience) were never part of my pretheoretic notion of experience. I'll go with him as far as the claim that consciousness is synonymous with experience or awareness. That seems vacuous. However, adding the proviso that experience is something over and above neuronal or other mechanisms goes well beyond my pretheoretic notions, and probably beyond the intuitions of Fodor's Grandma. However, Chalmers has the stones to claim that those not working within this loaded conception of consciousness aren't 'taking consciousness seriously' (this is a chorus in his book, from the Introduction onward).

So while I admire his clear expression of an idiosyncratic view of consciousness, I personally find it too tendentious to be useful.

Despite these seemingly obvious problems with his approach, I observed with dismay as the phrase 'What about the hard problem?' spread like syphilis over the amateur philosophy of consciousness landscape. It became a kind of cognitive creativity sink, an easy knee-jerk response to any discussion of consciousness. Psychologists and neuroscientists are now required, by law, to address the 'hard problem' in the first or final chapter of their books on consciousness. It's a bit ridiculous.

By analogy, when I talk to Creationists about a cool biological phenomenon, they immediately seem compelled to explain its origin in terms of God's amazing designing powers. It is really quite strange, as they are perfectly intelligent people, capable of having good discussions of other things. However, when it comes to the topic of phenotypes, their creativity, their scientific curiosity, and (most importantly) their obsession with evidential details and brainstorming about possible mechanisms are all shut off.

The daily editors of 3 Quarks Daily will now pick the top six entries from these, and after possibly adding up to three "wildcard" entries, will send that list of finalists to Professor Dan Dennett on September 11. We will also post the list of finalists here on that date.

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

I've just uploaded a couple of flickr sets of my artwork. One set contains stuff I've done on an iphone, especially using the excellent Brushes app. The other contains stuff I've done in mostly non-digital media.

[Olds] eventually discovered that if the probe was put in the brain's lateral hypothalamus and the rats were allowed to press a lever and stimulate their own electrodes, they would press until they collapsed.

Olds, and everyone else, assumed he'd found the brain's pleasure center (some scientists still think so). Later experiments done on humans confirmed that people will neglect almost everything—their personal hygiene, their family commitments—in order to keep getting that buzz.

But to Washington State University neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp, this supposed pleasure center didn't look very much like it was producing pleasure. Those self-stimulating rats, and later those humans, did not exhibit the euphoric satisfaction of creatures eating Double Stuf Oreos or repeatedly having orgasms. The animals, he writes in Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions, were "excessively excited, even crazed." The rats were in a constant state of sniffing and foraging. Some of the human subjects described feeling sexually aroused but didn't experience climax. Mammals stimulating the lateral hypothalamus seem to be caught in a loop, Panksepp writes, "where each stimulation evoked a reinvigorated search strategy" (and Panksepp wasn't referring to Bing).

[...]

University of Michigan professor of psychology Kent Berridge has spent more than two decades figuring out how the brain experiences pleasure. Like Panksepp, he, too, has come to the conclusion that what James Olds' rats were stimulating was not their reward center. In a series of experiments, he and other researchers have been able to tease apart that the mammalian brain has separate systems for what Berridge calls wanting and liking.

Wanting is Berridge's equivalent for Panksepp's seeking system. It is the liking system that Berridge believes is the brain's reward center. When we experience pleasure, it is our own opioid system, rather than our dopamine system, that is being stimulated. This is why the opiate drugs induce a kind of blissful stupor so different from the animating effect of cocaine and amphetamines. Wanting and liking are complementary. The former catalyzes us to action; the latter brings us to a satisfied pause. Seeking needs to be turned off, if even for a little while, so that the system does not run in an endless loop. When we get the object of our desire (be it a Twinkie or a sexual partner), we engage in consummatory acts that Panksepp says reduce arousal in the brain and temporarily, at least, inhibit our urge to seek.